“Algeria has no image”, says Kamel Daoud. The youth of this country have begun to create one, by rising up and winning the departure of President Bouteflika and his clan.

But nothing has been settled, nothing has been won, and the country remains, for the time being, as closed as ever, in the hands of the army, its future hanging in the balance.

Kamel Daoud, a French-speaking Algerian writer who lives in Oran and is read the world over, takes us on a journey through his own Algeria. His words are clear and sharp. With him, there is no complacency towards the regime, its flaws, Algerian society or the Islamists who have sworn its downfall. But a love of the country, its people and its language.

The vine and the Mediterranean, the place of women, religion, the radiant Oran, Algiers and power, the rebellious Kabylia where revolutions are born, a confiscated independence, a creative and joyful youth dreaming of overthrowing an ossified ‘system’: along the way, the portrait of a country gradually takes shape, but also of a man, born after the war of independence, a freedom-loving intellectual and a voice that counts in today’s Algeria.

Kamel Daoud opens the door to a little-known Algeria, inviting us to love and understand it better.